Mexican fiesta

"Excuse me, what is the recipe of your Michelada?"

My jaw dropped.

I couldn't believe what Viv had just asked the waiter.

We were at one of our favourite restaurants, and whenever we go there, Viv orders their speciality Michelada, a Mexican cocktail made of beer and magical spices and fairy dust and 384789572 other secret ingredients that no one knows, except for maybe the cocktail-making androids in their kitchen.

Not that we hadn't tried to look up the recipe on the net, but there were too many differing views on how to make the perfect Michelada. One actually suggested Maggi masala powder as a key ingredient! I kid you not.

So Viv, drunk on his Michelada I presume, decided to get it straight from the horse's mouth.

The very loyal employee of the restaurant hemmed and hawed and laughed nervously and moved along. However, the waiter at the adjacent table who had overheard our conversation came right over and casually told Viv the recipe.

I couldn't believe Viv had actually asked the waiter for the recipe!  I couldn't believe the waiter actually told him!

Anyway, we excitedly messaged the gang because we had decided that the theme for our next pot luck would be Mexican, and this fitted right in. Our last pot luck (themed comfort-food-that-must-also-have-the-acronym-PP) had been awesome and we had been considering making it a monthly thing, with a different cuisine/theme each time.

So last Saturday, we got together at Maya's place for our majestic Mexican fiesta! (I spared my friends from a Mexican dress code though, and I could literally hear the collective sighs of relief. Sigh.)

Viv and R immediately busied themselves with all kinds of permutations and combinations to achieve the perfect Michelada and after quite a few prototypes, finally tasted success -- quite literally. It was really good. Even a beer-hater like me didn't mind taking a few sips. 

Maya and Pizzadude made some killer jalapeno poppers, guacamole and salsa

(Okay, who replaced the cheese dip with the Tiger beer can for this photo??)

I made vegetarian quesadillas. 

Margaritas! No can do Mexican without margaritas!

Till the next one, cheers!

The perfect potluck

So my friend Pizzadude has got himself a cat. We decided to have a get-together at his place so the rest of us could be formally introduced to Ishta. (I'm still outraged, btw, that an avid F.R.I.E.N.D.S. fan like Pizzadude named his cat Ishta and not Smelly Cat.)

It was to be a potluck at his place and we were discussing the menu. Pizzadude suggested comfort food as the theme and offered to make his speciality dish - pesto pasta. I offered pani puri because my comfort food (and every other food) = pani puri. That's when I realised that both foods had PP as the acronym. So I suggested that Maya should also bring something with the acronym PP and she very sportingly agreed. (Yes, we are very random like that and very fortunate to be in a group where people are not only fine with the randomness, they actively participate in it.)

We got cracking. While she suggested sane choices such as pumpkin pie, pecan pie and puran poli, I couldn't think of anything at first, so I suggested poha pizza (on hindsight, YUCK!) and peela papad (duh!). But then eventually I did have some better ideas -- paneer pizza and paneer paratha. And then randomly I said, "perfect pongal!" Coincidentally, Maya's hubby was craving pongal and pickle, which is his comfort food. So we were all set with our PP-comfort-food themed menu.

For the drinks, I suggested the only PP drink I could think of -- pomegranate punch. My plan was just to add a bit of juice to a large amount of tequila a bit of tequila to a large amount of juice, but Pizzadude jazzed it up by adding pomegranate seeds and mint leaves. It was kickass.

And what a lovely evening we had. Ishta turned out to be this stunning black kitten with gorgeous eyes. We had only seen photos of him, so it was really nice to finally see him in person cat.

Ishta's pic added with permission from Pizzadude

The PP food was a big hit too. Multi-cuisine comfort food and the company of good friends -- what else can one ask for? Later, another random fact struck me. Our WhatsApp group is called Poorab-Pachhim because some of us live in the eastern part of Singapore and some in the west. PP!

To the Passionate Peeps Planning Perfect Potlucks using Pointless Party themes!

A bromantic rendezvous

"Having dinner with my buddy." said Viv's WhatsApp message to me.

From time to time, I get updates from both him and his dad on what they're up to during the road trip. But this message made me sit up.

My buddy??

Viv referring to his dad as his buddy was just tooooooo much. It was not possible at all, in spite of the fact that they have been road-tripping for a week.

So I asked, "Which buddy??"

And then he sent me a photo of him... and S! I almost fell off my chair.

Yes, S - one of the original 'hum paanch', S - whose brainchild it was to kidnap Viv to Malaysia on his birthday, S - who is married to one of my bestest friends Shub. S of the grand S2 wedding fame. S, who used to live in Singapore once upon a time, but has moved back to India now and taken my Shub with him! Grrrr.

Shub and I used to be so amused at the bromance between S and Viv. They clicked from day one, bonding mainly over cars and bikes and racing and running. I always used to tease Viv that he should be thankful that I blog because that's how I met Shub, leading him to meet S.

Viv doesn't say much, but I know he does miss his buddy. Every time he goes racing or go-karting anywhere in the world, he always remembers S and says, "Need to come back here with S."

So I was really amazed at this sudden rendezvous in the middle of a road trip on the other side of the world. It turns out that Viv went for a run (he has a target of 600 km to run in 2016, so he runs even when he's on holiday), and the Runkeeper app notified S about it. S sent him a message asking him if he really was running in Fremont, as he had just landed in SFO on work! The rest, as they say, is history.

It's so heartwarming to see technology bringing people together. :)

W is for wish

Dear Pickles,

I don't know when and whether you will read this, but here I go anyway. A long long time ago, when you were all of 1, your mommy Maya, Aunty S and I participated in this old-fashioned thing called an A-Z blog marathon, and we decided that we will all write a post on the same word, expressing our take on it. We then decided to make it more meaningful by choosing the word 'wish' with each of us making a wish (or wishes) for the three little tots -- you, A and Xena. So your mommy has written this for A, Aunty S has written this for Xena, and I'm writing this for you. (We agreed to post them simultaneously at 10 am IST.)

It would, of course, be presumptuous of me to assume that what I wish for you is what you would wish for yourself. We can make all the wishes we want for our children, but we have no control over the future and we don't know how things will turn out. But parents can be just as stubborn as kids (as you will discover) and so here I have 8 wishes for you.

I wish you:

- love, respect and appreciation for the gift of life your parents gave you

Everyone talks about the sacrifices that parents make, and children are probably sick of hearing them. Some cliches, such as 'You'll know when you have your own kids' are actually true, as uncle Viv and I, and your parents, have discovered after stepping into parenthood. You will discover that in good time, but for now I hope you can see that the life you have is truly a gift from your parents, and I wish you the wisdom to love it, respect it, appreciate it, and live it fully.

- a heart full of love and kindness
The world is a beautiful place. But at times, it can get ugly and scary, and full of hatred. The Internet especially, can sometimes become a horrible place full of unkind comments. I hope that by the time you grow up, all this blows over and you guys start afresh, with love, tolerance and kindness for one another.

- a life full of fewer gadgets and more real interactions
I hope that by the time you grow up, people around you are looking at the views and one another more than they're looking at their digital devices. I wish that given the choice, in your world, a kid picks a friend over an iPad (or its futuristic equivalent) any day.

- a cleaner and greener world 
The generations before you have royally screwed up the Earth. We are sorry for the state we have left it in for you guys. Though we are trying to make amends, it is a tad late. We hope that by the time you guys grow up, you will be more aware and will have more knowledge and resources to undo the damage done, and make the Earth clean and green again. And in case you guys have to relocate to Mars, remember our mistakes with Earth, and don't make them there.

- good health to enjoy your life
Eat healthy. Drink plenty of water. Exercise. Trust me, the payoff is much better than it looks on paper.

- a vocation that fills your heart with joy and makes you look forward to Monday mornings
Your parents are PhD-armed heavy-duty academics, and in our days (gosh I just made us sound so old), that would have meant an automatic and compulsory PhD for the offspring. But you were born in an era and a family that believes in freedom of choice, and I hope you find something that is your true calling, and yet provides you with the means to enjoy your life the way you want to. Some of us (*ahem*) take a while to get there, and I want to let you know that sometimes it is a winding path with ups and downs and confusion and uncertainty, but you just need to keep going and you will eventually get there.

- a love for travel
I hope that you will like to travel as much as your parents and we do, for nothing opens up your mind and heart the way travel does. From what we have seen, the people you meet and the cultures you experience during your travels change you as a person. In a good way.

- good friends
Last but not the least, I wish you good friends you can share your life with. It doesn't matter if they are two or twenty in number; what matters is that you can be truly yourself with them. Just the way Uncle Viv and I are, with your parents.

Love always,
Sayesha Masi

V is for visitor

We had a visitor yesterday. Argentyne. Someone who has been visiting the bar for years now, but visited in person today. It was wonderful to meet her (and not just because she said I'm taller in real life than the impression my blog header gives. Muahahahaha.) On a serious note, it didn't feel like we'd never met before. That always amazes me in a way. From the time I started blogging, I've had the opportunity to meet many many bewdas/bewdis in person, and not once did it feel like a first meeting. We just started talking as if we were picking up from an earlier conversation.

Very few of these actually live in Singapore. Most of them are visitors, just passing by. Singapore is a great hub for travellers, and at some point or the other, many of the bar's bewdas/bewdis find themselves on our tiny island. And if our pockets of time match, we meet. I have vivid memories of all the visitors of my blog whom I have met so far, and one of the closest to my heart is my dear darling Shub. She'd been reading my blog since 2005, and was a regular commentator for ages before we met over aloo ka parathas. We hit it off straightaway. A soul sister, I'd say. It amazed me to no end to have found her through the online world. Through her, we came to know Pizzadude and Sumanth. Pizzadude and I instantly bonded over our undying love for Bollywood, and a rocking bromance bloomed between Viv and Sumanth. Shub served as the glue that held us all together.

They say you are the average of the five people you hang out with. And the five of us sure had some above-average fun. I just went back to read the post I'd written about the five of the us and the mad things we did together, and now I'm in full senti mode. The nicknames (S2/D2/P2, husbandu, oifu, Joey, Thudson, veshti-man), the airport garlanding (Shub was the founder of SMART - Shub's Mind-blowing Airport Reception Technique, which we first used on Pizzadude and eventually on her too), the elaborate birthday surprises like this and this, the orchestrated kidnapping of Viv, the typewriter slap, the power-packed India trip to attend Shub and Sumanth's wedding. Everything. I always feel that my late 20s had really rocked because of these guys.

And then one day she dropped the bomb. They were moving back to India. I was in denial for the longest time, and on some levels I think I still refuse to believe it. But before leaving, she had done the most wonderful thing of introducing us to two of her friends (the ones we had the post-baby baby bash for) who were, I kid you not, exactly like them. 1 for 1 exchange offer. Jokes aside, her departure was a lot less painful and my 'Mera is duniya mein ab koi nahin hai' feeling was mitigated to a great extent due to these guys and Pizzadude who had thankfully not decided to pack up too.

One day, during a bus ride (obviously, as all such thoughts occur only during bus rides), it struck me that my current primary circle of friends has its origins in my blog. Most of our friends in Singapore had been from our university days, but most of them moved out of Singapore, breaking my heart (Hello Dubaiites, are you reading this??). We do hang out with the rest of our NTU gang from time to time, but our closest friends are these guys whom I met through Shub. If she'd not visited my blog, we'd not have met and I would have a completely different group of friends now. It might have sucked, it might have been great. I don't know and it doesn't matter. What I have now is awesome. The 30s are rocking because of these guys.

Thank you, Shub, for wandering over to my blog that fateful day. I love you and I miss you and I hope we can meet again soon.

U is for unconventional

A few weeks ago, I was at a neighbour's baby shower. All the women there started talking about their own baby showers and one of them asked me how mine was. "Well, I don't quite know. I gave birth before my baby shower." I said. She burst out laughing. Tsk. No one takes me seriously yaar. She then repeated my answer to the others and they all burst out laughing. So I did too. Oh well.

Yes, I did feel the pinch of not having had a baby shower, but in the mayhem that followed, it didn't matter. I had a baby. The baby shower didn't matter anymore.

But when a dear friend got pregnant, I was thrilled. I had grand plans for her baby shower. Just like mine, it was meant to coincide with her traditional godbharai ceremony. And just like mine, her baby also turned out to be a premmie. Researchers should really look into premature births as a contagious condition.

At my birthday lunch two weeks ago, we were both lamenting the fact that neither of us had had a baby shower. And in the bus, on the way back, a tiny thought crept into my head. What if she had a 'post-baby baby shower'? Now that would be a real surprise. Totally unexpected, unlike birthdays, where the approaching date makes you more alert and hence less susceptible to being surprised.

Last weekend, she'd invited us all to her place for lunch and to meet her parents. That was my chance. However, I didn't keep my hopes too high because I have lost track of the number of times we planned a trip to her place and then cancelled it because of Xena's health. We live on opposite ends of the island, so going over to each other's place is not exactly a breeze. So I didn't do much till the day before. I checked Xena's blood oxygen level and it was fine. I concluded that she was ready for the trip, and furiously got to work. Props were made with whatever I could find amongst Xena's toys - crayons, balloons, fingerpaint, stickers, etc. I made a sash with the words 'SASSY MAMA' written across it with fingerpaint, and a banner that declared through crayons that it was a post-baby baby shower, and decorated them with Xena's stickers. Her doll's abandoned tiara was pinched and decorated it with... you guessed it -- stickers!

Then it suddenly struck me -- we needed a cake! She is on a dairy-free diet at the moment, so I couldn't get a regular cake. Even muffins and other such treats all have some form of dairy. One of the options I could think of was a banana (I imagined a candle on it, the way they stick agarbattis on bananas in some temples), which was rather pathetic, and the other option was a watermelon cake that another friend had suggested. The problem with that was that we were going to yet another friend's place in the morning for a shuddhikaran puja and havan, and I didn't think the watermelon cake would survive a havan and a 90-minute commute. It would be squishy and gross. No cake then, I decided.

And then I remembered something. That I'm an Indian. We are the jugaad experts of the world. And like lightning it came to me -- sooji ka halwa! Perfect to stick a candle into, and had no milk in it, unlike regular Indian sweets. So I rushed to the supermarket and bought semolina and ghee (to the readers who are raising their eyebrows, shaant gadadhaari bheem, shaant; keep calm and read on) and started making it the night before. As I added a dollop of ghee to the wok and it started melting, it hit me. Realisation, not the ghee. That ghee was a dairy product. Sheesh. Double sheesh. So I started afresh, this time without any ghee. It was basically semolina, water, sugar and cardamom. I knew it had the potential to taste like crap, but I was of the hope that she would be so touched, she wouldn't notice the taste. To further distract her from the taste, I decorated the halwa using cashewnuts and raisins.

The next morning, I packed the halwa, a candle, a lighter, the sash, the tiara, the banner, a couple of heart-shaped blue balloons, a pump, blue-tac, play-dough, and a bunch of other things. We attended the pre-havan puja at my friend's house and then set off. (We couldn't stay for the actual havan because Xena can't be in smoky places because of her sensitive lungs.)

We reached sassy mama's house and had a nice sumptuous lunch. She then retired to her room to attend to her baby's needs and all of us jumped into action. Viv and Pizzadude had been briefed beforehand, but we had to quickly brief her husband. The balloons were blown, tied and stuck, along with the banner. We got the 'cake' out and kept it on the table. Then we waited for her to come out and discover it all. To our agony, she came out and went straight into the kitchen, without spotting anything. So we sent our secret agent Xena with the sash to lure her out. Xena gave her the sash and we heard a delighted squeal from sassy mama, who thought Xena had made it for her. Soon, we ambushed her with the tiara and pointed out the banner and then she got it. We got her to blow out the candle (in collaboration with Xena, the official candle-blower at all our birthdays) and cut the cake. Then we ate it. She said she really liked it. Awww. That's what friends are for. Lying.

The no-dairy cake

She thought that was it. But of course, it wasn't. I had prepared some games, which we played after putting Xena down for her afternoon nap. The first was a Koffee with Karan style quiz, where questions were posed to the new parents about their baby. Some samples: What colour were his first non-hospital clothes? What does his name mean? Where was his first outside-of-diaper peeing experience? (In case you're curious, the answer to the last one is 'on the nurse'!). Everyone thought it would be a one-sided contest in favour of the mommy, when the daddy surprised us all by correctly answering the very first question -- the full name of their gynaecologist, while the mommy only knew the first name. She bounced back quickly and overall, he lost badly to her. And then she immediately demanded her koffee hamper. Gulp. Later later, I told her.

The next game was for everyone to write down two qualities that make her a great mommy. I'd handed out coloured pieces of paper shaped like speech bubbles for everyone to write their notes on. After they were done, I put a ribbon through the holes punched into the pieces of paper, tied it all together and gave it to her as a keepsake.

And then came the third and final game. I gave both of them a few containers of Xena's play-dough and told them that they had use it to make a baby each. He immediately protested because he thought he'd be hopeless at it, but we convinced him to give it a try. He asked if there was a time limit and I told him there wasn't. While she made hers fairly quickly, lamenting that it looked like an alien, he took ages and ages. And what he finally made blew us away. The level of detailing he'd incorporated into his work of art had our jaws on the floor. No contest there. He was the clear winner. Hence, I sneakily told them that since it was a tie overall, they could each buy a koffee hamper for the other. Or not. Hee hee.

Behold.... his play-dough baby vs. her play-dough baby!

Inside jokes

So two of our bestest friends Reghu and Aathira, who live in Dubai, are in town. We share custody of them along with other friends RG and MB. They stayed with us for the weekend and now have gone off to stay with their 'weekday parents'.

We know one another from university days, so it's been more than a decade. But there's something very special about these three guys Reghu, RG and Viv, that ties them in a closer bond.

They bring out the worst in one another.

Jokes that is.

So whenever any combination of the trio is together, people usually cup their ears and run away as far as possible, screaming "Noooooo!" or try to find the nearest pillar to go thunk their heads on.

It starts with the Dubai jokes:

Viv - If a milkman from India moves to Dubai, what does he become?
The rest of us - What?
Viv - Milk sheikh!

The rest of us look for the nearest pillar to thunk our heads on.

Then come the cricket jokes:

Viv - If they named a road after Dhoni, what would they call it?
The rest of us - What?
Viv - Mahi Way!

The rest of us look for the nearest pillar to thunk our heads on.

Then come the geeky jokes:

RG - The iPad won't sell in Bengal.
The rest of us - Why?
RG - Because they wouldn't know it's something new. They'd think it's the iPod.

The rest of us look for the nearest pillar to thunk our heads on.

And then come the nerdy jokes. I don't where Reghu got these two, but they are priceless. In an extremely head-thunking manner of course.

Reghu - So there's a wet slab of ice. On top of that is another wet slab of ice. On top of that is a kitten. The kitten is making no sound. Why?
The rest of us - Why?
Reghu - Because meow is equal to zero.
The rest of us - Huh??
Reghu - It's two slabs of wet ice. So the coefficient of friction... μ = zero.

Reghu - This mathematician checks into the deluxe suit of a hotel. He wants to bathe but there is no soap or water. What does he do?
The rest of us - What?
Reghu - He integrates his room.
The rest of us - Huh??
Reghu - If you integrate dLux, you get Lux + C. He takes the Lux and bathes in the C!

May all you bewdas find your pillars soon! Amen.

Jei Ho!

Pre-script 1: The good people at BlogAdda have interviewed the Bartender Bhai here. Special thanks to the interviewer Harish for his patience -- I think I asked him more questions than he asked me!

Pre-script 2: If you're wondering about the 'typo' in the post title, read on. Post abhi baaki hai, mere dost!

So S2/D2/P2 arrived back in Singapore today. (Bewdas who are new to the bar may need to refer to this post to find out who they are.)

"Shall we go receive them at the airport? They're landing early in the morning on saturday." Pizzadude wrote gleefully to Viv and me a few days ago. I can assure you that this was no caring friend talking. This was a man who had been burning in the fire of vengeance since this little incident. And this seemed like the perfect little opportunity for him to have his revenge. Of course Viv and I got involved. We're only happy to get involved in anything that involves these keywords - S2/P2/D2, Pizzadude, a high degree of embarrassment, and of course, a camera for posterity.

And as is normal with us, what's a project without a title? And thanks to Viv's project-naming skills, project JEI HO was conceptualised and finalised partly over email and partly over mysore masala dosas last night.

So there we were, up at 5 am this morning, armed with the following:

- One steel thaali
- One small container of sindoor
- The ugliest garland in the world (See picture at your own risk. Warning: graphic image; parental guidance advised)
- One homemade poster (you'll see)

So we took at cab at 5.30 am to the train station and then a train to the airport. It was in the cab that we suddenly realised that in our sleepy and dazed state, we had forgotten the camera at home! Damn you lucky S2/D2/P2! Anyway, we decided to take the videos and photos using Viv's phone instead.

The train ride was rather eventful, and as often happens when you make a journey at an unearthly hour, the talk was inane. We discussed the possible superpowers of our homegrown superhero Veshtiman (read more about Veshtiman here). Viv is still working out the finer details of how many ways Veshtiman can use his veshti in, to save the world, but that's a whole other post (coming soon).

Meanwhile, the three of us reached the airport and freaked out to see that the flight had already landed. We hid behind the pillars and waited and waited and wondered and wondered. "What if they have already gone home? What if they pulled a fast one on us and told us the wrong flight timing??" In the midst of discussing how we would avoid ending up as the "embarrasees" in the case of either of the scenarios being true, we spotted S2/D2/P2! PHEW!

So we hid behind the pillar again, and just when the unsuspecting couple came out, we ambushed them with this poster. Proudly held high, to the amusement of onlookers! (There sure were a lot of people at the airport at an unearthly time like that!)













(Of course, I have blurred out the wedding pictures in the poster. I may be the Bhai, but sleep-deprived furious brides who have just been 'surprised' at the airport can be ahem, quite unpredictable.)

This was duly followed by the 'teeka ceremony' at the airport itself, and then we made the couple exchange the ugly garland. Well, there was only one garland, so there was no 'exchange' as such, we just used the same one. Shub remarked, "Thank goodness there is no aarti!" and then immediately retracted it with, "Wait, that's a dangerous statement to make." (Inside joke: When we had ambushed Pizzadude with the poster at the airport last year, he had said, "Thank goodness you didn't get a garland or something!" and Viv immediately took the garland out and honoured him with it. Muahahaha!)

But to Shub's relief, there actually was no aarti. We had briefly considered the aarti and ghanti, but we dropped the idea as we were not sure of Singapore's jail procedures for lighting a fire in Changi airport, and whether we could be bailed out in time to go to work on Monday.

Oh well.

Anyway, S2/D2/P2, it's good to have you guys back! Really. :)

JEI HO!

PS: Ooh I almost forgot to disclose what JEI HO stands for! It's Joint Embarrassment Initiative for Husbandu and Oifu.

Wish list

Conversation over sms:

Shub - So what do you want for your birthday?
Me - Whoa... profound question. Hmmm... world peace!
Shub - And shoes??
Me - OMG YES! SHOES! Shoes and world peace. Yes. Perfect.
Shub - Mother Teresa in Manolos, eh? ;)

* * *

Yep. Shoes and world peace. That's my wish list. Nothing more.

Because I already have the people in my life who can make me laugh out loud in the middle of a bus-stop with nothing more than just an sms message.

A warm reception

Shub and I have been told on numerous occasions that we look (and behave, especially if under the influence of mango margarita) like twins. You know how some people have evil twins? In our case, however, we are both evil. You can say that we are each other's evil twins. It only depends on who is more evil in a particular situation.

And in this particular situation - also known as our friend Pizzadude returning to Singapore after a month in India - she went up a notch higher on the evil-o-meter.

"Hey, Pizzadude is coming back to Singapore on Saturday morning. Shall we go and embarrass him at the airport?" She said to me during duty at the restaurant last saturday.

"Of course!" I jumped. Of course, jumping while you're in a sari is not advisable - not only does a jumping waitress present an un-elegant picture, it is also a highly dangerous activity for your general well-being and sense of balance. This particular jump was executed by a trained expert and should not, under any circumstances, be attempted at home.

"All right, let's do it! We'll make a banner, and possibly a garland!"

"A garland! I LOVE the idea!"

We were so excited by the idea we were not bothered by the fact that we would have to get up at 6 am on a Saturday to execute the plan. She roped in his flatmates and I roped in Viv. Yesterday, I created a draft on Word with the text for the banner "WHERE IS THE PIZZA, DUDE?" in font size 120, bold, red, and sent it to Shub. I'd also added a picture of a pizza just in case. She said she could not view the word "is" (it was a .docx document) but said she'd print it and do up a collage.

Incidentally, Shub lives in a part of Singapore which is also known as Malaysia by some (ahem!) and so we decided she should come over to my place the night before and we could all leave for the airport together in the morning. Travelling from Malaysia to Singapore can take quite some time, and by the time she got to my place, I was already in dreamland. Viv and she put together the collage which I saw only when I woke up this morning.
It said "WHERE IZ THE [picture of pizza] DUDE?" Now usually I try not to put my editor self to work outside work, but my first reaction to the "IZ" was "What the...?!" She explained later that because there was no "is" they had decided to take the "IZ" from the word "PIZZA" since they had used the picture of the pizza instead of the word. Also, the question mark had also gone missing from the document so they used the "P" of the pizza and whatever remaining letters to make a "question mark".

One of Pizzadude's flatmates backed out at the last minute. I'm sure he thought the drama at the airport could get more embarrassing for the embarrasors than the embarrasee. The other turned up just in time, armed with what can only be referred to as The Ghastliest Garland In The World. It had fake plastic flowers of more colours than you could count, and was plain BLEARGH. Yup, that's the word. We were delighted with it!

So Pizzadude comes out of his gate and screeches to a halt. We are holding the banner high up, ignoring the pointing and staring by the people in the airport. His jaw falls and eyes pop out. "Oh my god!!!!" He says. He looks at the banner, then at Shub, Viv, his flatmate and me, and then at the banner again.

"We came to embarrass you." We admit.

Well, he is embarrassed all right. He takes a while to calm his senses and find his words.

"Thank god you didn't get like a garland or something." He says finally.

We burst out laughing as Viv takes the garland out.

Pizzadude cannot believe his eyes. "Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" He goes.

His protests are ignored and he is duly garlanded. More people turn and stare at this bunch of loony-bins.

He immediately takes the garland off and we go, "Oh no no no! Put it back put it back! We have to take pictures!"

"There are pictures?" By now you can actually feel the bloke's agony. You can even see the thought bubble floating above his head with a playlist - "Dost dost na raha..." followed by "Dushman na karey dost ne woh kaam kiya hai..."

So his flatmate places the camera on the ledge near the waterfall, puts it on timer, we garland the guy again, hold up the banner and smile. More staring. The flatmate is also evil, as he has put the timer on the maximum time possible so we look totally silly holding up all the stuff and grinning for the longest time at apparently nobody. The first shot is not that great, so we do the whole routine again - TWICE! Kudos to Pizzadude for taking it in such good spirit. Bhagwaan hum jaise dost kisi ko na de.

Fortunately, Shub had bought him a slice of cheesecake to sweeten the blow. Later, as we helped ourselves to all the goodies he had got for us (and still shared with us, in spite of what we had done to him), we decided that this had been a major success and that we should probably start a business on this. This is the business plan: we embarrass your friends by receiving them at the airport with moronic banners and you pay us for it. Agarbatti, teeka and ghanti are thrown in for free but there's a 5-dollar extra charge for the garland. Ten more if you want the show to include singing. Clients can choose from our extensive and exhaustive playlist of "Aao huzoor tumko" and "Aaiye meherbaan". You can also avail of our extra services - photography and video-recording of the 'spectacle'. And finally, 10 dollars more if you want the whole thing to go up on Youtube for further embarrassment of your (ex?)friend. Finally, the special services of our truly global company include having our "overseas partners" to "receive" your friends in a similar manner, no matter where your friends fly to escape from you.

As for Pizzadude, well, he has sworn off flying.

We are all still friends though.

Errr... I think.

Making cents

I'd wanted to blog about this little incident that happened a couple of days ago with a dear friend of mine, but the last few days have been absolutely insane at work.

However, last night said dear friend sent me an sms asking me whether I ever intended to update my blog or not. So I thought - okay, here goes, and blogged it down before leaving for work. Uh oh, too late babe! You asked for it! :P

***

She - So what else is happening?

Me - Hey, did I tell you the first run of my book sold out? I'm so happy!

She - Congrats! So what kind of royalty will you get?

Me - I get 10% of book sales. The book is priced at $7.80, so I get 78 cents for each book sold.

She - That's great! I'll buy a copy.

I looked at her with absolute adoration. Her statement had warmed the core of my heart.

You see, this book is not a cutesy fancy storybook that anyone would buy. It's hard core curriculum stuff. It's a book on challenging questions based on the Singapore primary science syllabus. It's the kind of stuff that excruciating classwork and homework are made of. In fact, it's a book that would make my target audience - 9-year-old kids - throw their (empty) lunchboxes at me in disgust if they found out I wrote it.

No wonder I looked at her with a fond "Awwww! You will buy my book?" expression.

She - Of course.

Me - Wow, thanks!

She - Or... I could just give you 78 cents. That would work out cheaper for me.

Me - :/

Sayesha thunks her head against hypothetical brick wall in slow, repeated motions.


.

This conversation is over

Most of us have talked to ourselves at one point in time or the other. But not many would have experienced talking to themselves with 15 people in the CC field. Hi, I’m Sayesha and this is the story of how my plan got sabotaged.

Almost a decade ago, a lost freshie was sitting in the university canteen when she spotted a senior of hers mourning the loss of his mobile phone. They got into a scintillating conversation about lost mobile phones, which somehow led to a great friendship that survived the years.

Recently, the lost freshie heard some breaking news from the senior R and his wife A, and freaked out. The Bhai, on the other hand, was pleased as hell at the possibility of yet another franchise. Anyway, this email was promptly sent out.

Date: 9 July 2007 (Monday)
From: Sayesha
To: Buncha people

Hi people,

As you know, our favourite mallus are leaving sunny Singapore for (dubious?) Dubai. Viv and I are planning a surprise farewell party for them this weekend, most probably on saturday night at our place. We'd like to invite you to bid them farewell in style. I don't have everyone's email ids, so please feel free to invite anyone else whom they're close to.

I'm also planning to do up a slideshow with old photos and sabo-ing captions, so if you have any old (and preferably, ridiculous) photos of the two of them, please send them over asap. Sorry for the late notice, but I found out only this morning to my utter horror that they may be leaving as early as mid-next week!!

I will follow-up with another email as soon as I find whether they're free on saturday or sunday evening (depends on when the movers will be coming to err.. move their stuff.)

Hope everyone can make it! Do let me know, please! :)

And needless to say (but I'll still say it), if you bump into them somewhere before the weekend, shhhhhhhhh! :P

Cheers!
Sayesha

The response to the email (via sms, calls and emails) was tremendous, and her email was forwarded on to more people. And that’s when something happened…

Date: 10 July 2007 (Tuesday)
From: Sayesha
To: Buncha people

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the awesome response to my email. However, the latest is that our two mallus have pulled a fast one on us! Word is that unaware of what's cooking here, they may be trying to arrange a get-together of their own somewhere outside on Friday!!!! *PANIC ATTACK*

In order to avoid a "Hello again! Didn't we just see you like yesterday?" kinda situation for all of us, we have to do something. Is it possible for you guys to stall his get-together to sunday so that we can carry on with saturday's "surprise party" (after which they may choose to have or not have the sunday thingie, depending on how much of us they can take)? I don't know if he has contacted any of you guys or any plans have been made, but do let us all know what's happening.

In the hopeful case of us carrying on with our saturday plans, I'm thinking of getting everyone in by 7.00 pm, and getting them in by 7.30 pm. I think a pot luck party would be fun. But please don't stress too much about what to bring, cos that's immaterial. Just bring anything. If you really can't think of what to bring, get ice-cream or alcohol and juices, or disposable cutlery. But do let me know what you're bringing so that we don't end up with a mountain of plastic spoons and forks and no food to eat with them! :P

Cheers!
Sayesha

Meanwhile, R sent an email out to the very same buncha people asking them to meet for dinner at a mallu place! Needless to say, intervention was needed again.

Date: 11 July 2007 (Wednesday)
From: Sayesha
To: Buncha people

Hi people,

It's me again. (I'd be surprised if you haven't put my name on your junk mail filter by now.) Sorry for the third email in succession, but I thought I should send an email in case you're wondering what to do about R's email about meeting on Friday night. (No wonder there is total silence on that thread, poor guy must be heart-broken by now, thinking no one wants to see him before he leaves.) And now he's brought in the senti mallu food angle too, so we can't go ahead and do the whole "turn-him-down-on-Friday and surprise-him-on-saturday" thingie. Sheesh!

Okay lah, so we just go ahead and meet him on Friday, and if you guys are still keen (or if friday's attendance is not too large), we can continue with saturday's plan.

SIGHHHH!!! :(
Sayesha

After we returned from Friday's dinner, Viv was checking his email and to my horror, since he did not have the emails that were sent to me as a 'Reply' instead of a 'Reply all' to everyone, the thread really looked like I had just been talking to myself. So I figured there had to be a grand finale. An email to say "This conversation is over!"

Date: 13 July 2007 (Friday)
From: Sayesha
To: Buncha people

Hi people,

Continuing the insanity of talking to myself on this thread, it is time to formally announce the cancellation of tomorrow's surprise party, seeing as to how most of the people in this thread already met the mallus tonight. I'm so heart-broken. I'd actually designed a 'How much do you know 'em?' quiz to have at the party, with embarrassing questions from his past which only people who were close to him would know (and win the grand Ferrero Rocher prize). And that's not all. I printed 20 copies of the quiz. May the trees and the office printer forgive me.

Amen.
Sayesha

Okay fine, so surprises don’t hit twice. And even though I think that “It’s the thought that counts” is a crappy concept introduced by lazy procrastinators who can’t put together a half-decent party or a gift, I’ll say something just as crappy.

At least I tried.

Farewell, my friends, and do the Bhai proud in the land of legal tax evasion!

Work it out

Rachel - I know I know!! He's a... he's a... transponster!
Monica - THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!!!!!!

Fellow fans of the TV series F.R.I.E.N.D.S will know what I am talking about. This is one of my favourite scenes from the series, not just because of the way Chandler reacts to none of his close friends knowing his occupation, but because of how true this phenomenon is.

For years I have faced questions like:

"So Sayesha, how's the newspaper going?" (What newspaper??)

"I heard you're like a journalist and stuff?" (Where did you hear that?)

"So do they send you to places with natural disasters for news reporting?" (Huh??)

"Is your job dangerous?" (Yeah, very. Editors of kids' books and magazines are shot on the streets of Singapore.)

"Man, I heard you're the Chief Editor of the largest newspaper in Singapore! That's cool yaar!" (I wish! Actually I don't. Newspapers? Bleah.)

"So MBA over?" (MBA? Who's doing an MBA? If you mean Masters in Mass Communication, yeah, that's over.)

And that's when it struck me - instead of being glad that most of them at least know vaguely that I have abandoned engineering for good and plunged into publishing, I go "What buggers! They're supposed to be my close friends and they don't even know what I do!" without wondering for a moment if I know for sure what the hell they do.

I mean face it, your friends, your cousins... do you really know what they do? I for one, don't. I mean I know some are in IT, some are in banks, some are doing their MBA degrees, some are doing random things, but if you ask me exactly what they do, which company they are in, what their designation is, what they are studying, I have no clue most of the time!

Take for example this cousin of mine. Every time I speak to him, I ask him the same question. In fact, I've been asking the same question for years now, "So have you graduated from university? Got your IT degree?" And he keeps saying he hasn't. So either he's flunking every year, or I have been asking him the question since he was in primary school.

When you become friends with someone, the first thing you find out is what they do. But the closer you get, the less it matters what they do, and after a while, it stops mattering. And by then, not only have you forgotten what they do, but you're such close friends that you have missed the window period of friendship when you can actually ask them, "So what exactly do you do?" Even trying to be smart and asking them, "So what's up, man? What have you been upto?" will get you answers like "Same old yaar..." or "Still working in the same place..." while on the inside you're dying to ask, "And what exactly was the same old?" or "What is that place again?"

And that's when I discovered this wonderful solution called Orkut. We may curse it for all the random "frand shib requests" and "Nice profile. I want to friend you. You want to friend me?" messages, but the truth is - it can help you in a way no one can.

Every moment of every day, long-lost friends are getting in touch through Orkut. Visit the profile of any of your friends and you will see messages like "Hi Bhaiya, remember me? I was your junior in school, you used to snatch my tiffin box!" or "Man, you look so different from school days!" or "Hey, remember me? We were in the same IIT coaching class!" or "I can't believe I found you after so many years! How are Uncle and Aunty and Didi?" Now the trick is to follow the trail of these long lost friends of your friends, for they are bound to ask your friend at one point or the other, "So what do you do?" And when you see that, bingo! You go to that person's scrapbook, read your friend's reply, and lo and behold, you know exactly what your friend does for a living!

Of course, do remember to disable 'profile visit views' before you go on your spying spree or you may just end up with a message like "Why you visited my profile? Now I want to friend you."

The screwed-up system that actually works fine

Remember that quote we used to write in our friends' autograph books when we were young?

"Friendship is like chinaware
Beautiful, fragile and rare
Once broken, can be mended
But the crack is always there"

And then we grew up and these quotes started to appear silly. We started to behave all mature and diplomatic. We started to pretend we did not see the cracks.

However, at times I feel that I may have natured in many ways, but when it comes to my friends, I lose about 20 years of my age.

Even though I have become more cynical of friendships over the years, and I have very few friends who I'm really really close to, but I love them, get angry with them, miss them, get jealous when they get close to someone else, accuse them, hurt them, fight with them, forgive them, ask for forgiveness and often get very silly and emotional about them.

And the most amazing thing is - I do all these things not just with people I know, but even with my blog friends, people I have never met before, but some of whom I cherish deeply.

What scares me is that contrary to my belief, I may never meet them in this lifetime.

But other than that, they're as much my friends as my real-life friends are. The funniest thing is - I have even had such major fights with a few of my blog friends that they have ended in fallouts. And I often wonder - do, or rather, can grown-ups really have fallouts with people they have never met??

Sometimes we take certain liberties with our friends, we say and do things that we don't mean in the way it is received. And we don't realise they may have hurt our friend. And if our friend does not talk about it, we just move on not even realising that a friend is still nursing a wound caused by our words. It's only when one fine day, we're hurt by our friend's words, and we don't talk about it, that we realise that our friend does not even realise we're still nursing a wound caused by his/her words.

If you're fortunate enough to be able to bring it out and talk about it, things may heal for good. Sometimes you can forgive easily, sometimes you are forgiven easily. But at other times, it's not so easy. And it's tempting to sweep the matter under the carpet. We may feel that's the mature thing to do. Just forget about it. But if we can't forget, why pretend? What's the point in being all mature and grown-up, if the problem is still gnawing at the back of our minds? By pretending to be okay when we're not, we're being unfair not just to ourselves but also to our friend who thinks we're okay. Sometimes, a fallout is better than a friendship held together for the mere sake of holding it together.

Over the years, I've come to realise that fallouts are not personal failures. If you can't forget, there is no point forgiving. You just have to move on. Don't look back - just let it go.

But what I am glad about is that there are certain friendships where you can have a fallout, you can patch up, and surprisingly, the crack will not be there. The only problem is that such friendships are extremely rare. Chemistry like that happens only if you're very very lucky.

I guess it's part of the package. You hurt your friends. Your friends hurt you. Fallouts happen. There's no way out of it. That's how the system works.

Luckily, there's something so endearing about the bond of real friendship, that when we find friends who really matter, we just find a way to work around the screwed-up system.

The price of friendship

If you wanna be my friend, there's a price you have to pay.

Literally.

Sash Bhai se dushmani bhot mehengi hai, yeh sabko maloom hai. Lekin Sash Bhai se dosti usse bhi zyada mehengi hai, yeh bhot kam logon ko maloom hai. :D

My close friends know that there's an unwritten contract they signed the moment they undertook the risk of befriending me.

I'm a stickler for punctuality. Now if there's anything I hate, it's having to wait endlessly for a friend to turn up for a movie or dinner or whatever we'd planned.

So if my friends are late, I charge them.

And it's all according to the contract. The contract that has only this one clause (hereafter known as The Clause):

"Thou shalt not be late for movie, dinner and other such appointments fixed with your friend the mighty Sayesha. If thou art late, methinks thou art dead. If thou still hath the courage to show up late, thou hereby undertakes to pay for every single item the mighty Sayesha ends up buying while she waits for you. The later thou art, the more significant the purchases will become, and the bigger dent in your wallet they will cause. Due consideration shall be given to last minute emergencies if brought to the notice of the might Sayesha resonably in advance. The mighty Sayesha will exercise her discretion for such cases. However, thou shalt not forget that thou art supposed to take The Clause seriously."

None of the following sms messages have the capability of melting my steely heart.

- Sorry, wasn't looking at watch. Taking cab now, will be slightly late.
- Will be late, dunno how late.
- Sorry sorry rushing rushing!
- Are you already there?
- Errr... Are you still there?
- Damnit no cabs! Will call one. Be there soon.
- All lines are busy damnit. Be there soon.
- I thought I'd finish this, but it's taking longer than I thought.
- Be there in ten min, promise!
- Hey... if I don't get there in half an hour, count me out. Will try my best tho.
- Am ALMOST there!
- I can see you!

Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not a shopaholic. It's just that if I am made to wait, I get restless. Then I start entering random shops. Waise toh irada is nek - only to window-shop. Lekin kuchh oonch neech ho jaaye toh they have to pay for whatever I end up buying. Reasonable, isn't it?

A friend used to be always late. Always always late. Late for everything. You name it and he'd be late. So the other day, I enforced the clause in the agreement.

He actually paid for two pairs of shoes which are currently sitting pretty in the shoerack outside my door. (Now don't give me those looks okay, he owed me a birthday gift anyway! )

Lesson learnt. These days, he's dot on time. Muahahaha.

So last night, in celebration of this being my term break, the closing of a deal with a best-selling author for a new series of books, I decided to reward myself. Holding on to free movies passes I had wrangled out of my flatmate, I decided to meet up with one of my beshtesht friends and watch a chick flick 'John Tucker must die'.

My friend got stuck at work and messaged me to say she would probably be late.There was still some time before the movie started and before I knew it, I had wandered into Noda. Some time later, I found myself at Series. Ummm... Let's just say things happened.

My friend turned up just in time for the movie. After the movie, I generously told her that I was waiving the $103 late fee because she had not been informed of The Clause.

So as we walked towards the bus stop discussing The Clause, she brought up a very important point. So far, it had always been clothes or shoes or accessories.

"But what if you end up buying a laptop?" She asked.

Hmm... that thought had not crossed my mind. Interesting... very interesting... I see a solid business plan here.

*evil grin* :D

Toh... Mujhse dosti karoge? ;)

The bored room meeting

Some time ago, a dear friend of mine asked me a la Hrithik in Lakshya, "Sayesha, tum kabhi bore nahin hoti?" ("Sayesha, don't you ever get bored?")

So I coyly looked at my nails (an action that precedes most of my replies to his weird questions) and said, "Mere paas bore hone ke liye waqt nahin hai." ("I have no time to get bored.")

So you can imagine my shock when last weekend, I found myself experiencing what I never ever do - boredom. :O

I mentioned in a recent post that when we say we have no time for something, we're just bullshitting ourselves. If we really wanna do something, we'll always have time for it. I guess that holds for boredom too. If you really wanna get bored, if getting bored is important to you, if you truly value boredom, you will surely find one way or another to achieve it.

Nevertheless, for a person who drafts and follows a timetable for everything, it was quite shocking.

Like many people, my usual weekend description follows the very eloquent expression by Circuit in Munnabhai - "Shuru hote hi khatam ho gaya". ("Ended the moment it started.") In a typical weekend, if I can get some dissertation work done, meet up with a friend or two, go to the gym, squeeze in a movie, and clean my room, I consider it an achievement to be proud of.

Which is why last weekend was really weird. The time just wouldn't pass! I got up, made pancakes for breakfast, worked on my dissertation (Gosh! Writing a 100-page dissertation is not easy, they should just allow me to copy-paste my blog posts and submit it as my dissertation!), caught up with my school gang and some cousins on Orkut, called up my family and spoke to everyone, washed two loads of clothes (okay fine, I did not exactly sit at Dhobyghaut MRT station and danda-peeto my clothes, but it's work all the same), wrote a blog post, updated Hopscotch, separated clothes to give away to the cleaner in my building, packed some of my stuff (I'm moving in two weeks), put my bank statements in order, went to the gym, went to the dentist, watched four hindi movies on Youtube (Sheesh, that's 12 hours - half a day, 25% of a weekend!), stared out of my window.

Stared out of my window.

Stared out of my window.

I could have gone for a walk, but did not feel like stepping out of my room because I think my current flatmates were in the living room, interviewing someone to replace me after I move out.

And I don't like people who try to take my place. :|

So after a while, I turned to look at the clock, expecting it to be 10 pm on a sunday night - bedtime for good girls - so good girls can go to bed to wake up at six to go to work on Monday morning, when I realised to my horror that it was only 6:30 pm.

So I decided to spend some quality time with my pets. I have three of 'em - a dog called Frodo, a fat chick called... err... Fat Chick (one of my most TP posts was on her washing machine experience) and a fish called Nemo. And I haven't been able to pay much attention to them ever since I started my Master's course.

So I invited the three of them to a 'bored' room meeeting in my room, and here are the party... errr I mean meeting... pics.















The invitees are on time! They know Sayesha hates it when people (and animals) are late!
















Conspiracy theory - "Where do you think Sayesha has kept the booze?"
















What? Frodo is already drunk?!
















And so is Fat Chick!
















"Nemo, tu bhi thoda sa pi le" *Pat pat*
















"Lekin main toh abhi bacha hoon..." Nemo decides to observe Frodo...
















... and now Nemo observes Fat Chick...
















Now Nemo is drunk too!
















"Nemo, you're my best friend!"
















"Fat Chick, you're my best friend too!"
















Fat Chick says goodbye. I think she's had a bit too much. Alert - chicks should watch their drinks.

After the party was over, I snuggled into my comforter and started wondering about this extra time in the game called life that I had just encountered. And just like that, a thought struck me. We get an extra day every four years because the earth takes a little more than 365 days to revolve around the sun. Maybe there's a glitch in the matrix somewhere, that causes each week to be slightly longer than what we expect a week to be like, and it all gets added up one fine day to give us that extra time that surprises us.

Maybe once in a blue moon, we get a 'leap weekend', but we're just too busy to notice it.

Where have all the cowboys gone?

I recently got back in touch with my feminine side.

Well, that's 'cos I hang out in an all-guys-group. And they're all away on vacation. It's annoying how suddenly I have so much time in the weekend, and no idea what to do with it!

So here's what I've been upto. I'm talking serious girly stuff here. Aerobics. Swimming. Herbal hair treatment. Face packs with cucumber slices. Manicures. Pedicures. Threading eyebrows myself. Watching SATC. Trying out new make-up. New accessories.

(Oh geez, how girly can I get?)

And oh, I discovered the perfectly painless epilator! I remember the time when I used my old epilator on a toe hair of one of my guy friends, just to let him have a taste of the pain gals go thru to get smooth legs and arms. I think he almost cried! Hahaha! Guy, when you come back, you gotta try this one and do a comparision study! :P

Come back soon, you morons! Without you, I'm turning into a girly girl! :O

Miss you guys :(

What if...

Kunal Ganjawala is an important man in my life.

There was a time when Sinnerman and I were so obsessed with his debut hit 'Bheege honth tere' that we would listen to it 40 times on loop, and when finally we stopped, we would be humming it! Those few weeks, the song played in my head ALL THE TIME! Till I had to force myself to obsess over another song just to get this one outta my system, 'cos it was driving me crazy!

Then, Kunal featured again in one of my earlier posts in the list of things that sound right in my head, when trying to guess his age, I made the very profound remark that had Sinnerman in splits. "He must be really young. Old men are not called Kunal!" Ah, well.

And now, this! I happened to find out today that I know someone who'd crossed paths (and voices) with Kunal in virtually every singing competition in his college days years ago. He's Mr. Stranger aka Mr. Talented aka CD guy aka Scwibbles from here. Both him and Kunal had had their shares of wins and losses in those high-profile competitions. I was so amazed! The two of them could have easily switched roles with one twist of fate. Today, Kunal could have been the artist and Mr. Stranger the singer. I could have been having chai and conversations with Kunal Ganjawala, while listening to Mr. Stranger croon "Bheege honth tere" 40 times on loop. How would that be like? One of the millions of the what-ifs of life...

Well, I am having chai and conversations with someone who beat someone who sang something I love.

And that's reason to celebrate! :)

Don't you dare steal my friend away

I am 24 years old. Which means I am not 10 anymore. And yet, I successfully manage to get jealous of people who I think are going to 'steal my friends away from me'!

Now and then, scary thoughts haunt me.

What will happen when my friends move away? Are they going to find new friends who are better than me?

What will happen when they get married? Will I become a speck in their past?

All right, who's this new person trying to be friends with my friend? Dude, what's with the whole buddy-buddy thing? Are they closer to each other than we are? Back off, mister, I have known my friend from long before you were born! (Ok I went overboard with the last one.)

But today, as I was talking to one of my closest friends, he mentioned that we have been friends for almost 7 years now! 7 years!!! And our friendship is exactly the same! (*Touch big block of wood*) We still tease each other about the same things. We still laugh at the same good old jokes. We still exclaim "GMTA (Great Minds Think Alike)!" when we say the same things at the same time!

And I realise it's the same with every one of my close friends.

Here's to Reghu's reassurances that everything is fine.

Here's to Sinnerman's return and the special connection I have with him.

Here's to the weird nicknames that Soldier gives me every time he meets me, that make him laugh like a baby.

Here's to Viv for always being there for me.

Here's to the millions of fights that Max and I have, that make us closer friends than before.

Here's to Anshuli, for never letting me feel that she has now moved to the other side of the world.

Here's to Sandy, for her absolute trust in me.

Here's to CK for still being the adorable moron that he always was.

Here's to Smita, Reena, Sweta, Sonia, Nawab and DJ for never failing to call me on my birthday.

Here's to Bel, Radha and Arch for putting up with my antics at office.

I feel reassured.

Maybe it's true. No one can 'steal' your friends. It doesn't happen that way.

And that's the way it is.

Everyone's fat outside office hours

"So everyone is fatter than they look in the office, eh?" my friend Starbreez exclaimed at our first tennis game a few weeks ago.

She was right.

There we were, sans the formal wear, sans the delicate shawls in which we wrap ourselves against the air-conditioning in the office, sans the make-up that makes us pretty, sans the high heels that make us elegant.

There we were, sweaty and ugly and fat, in our T-shirts, shorts and shoes, running around with tennis racquets in the most unelegant manner possible.

Yes, outside office hours, everyone is fat.

But it's the people you're willing to show your 'fat side' to, that matter the most.

It's the people who have seen your 'fat side' that are your real friends.